7 ms·
Thorium
- merraksh 10y agoPrevious discussions on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2401498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2401498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857053
- tptacek 10y agoIn particular this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4913976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4913976
- ajkjk 10y agoThis writing style makes me actively distrust anything written in it. It's the opposite of convincing.
- mordocai 10y agoAgreed, I didn't finish reading the post due to the writing style.
- xori 10y agoSame, author glosses over important details and is clearly biased. I agree with the spirit of the article but the execution is flawed.
- swampthinker 10y agoThis is written very similarly to the anti-vaccination articles. Just sets off all kinds of red flags.
- throwanem 10y agoIt really does, even though I generally tend to favor thorium-cycle power generation. Also, why is "fluoride" such a hard word to spell?
- swampthinker 10y agoIt's those "chemtrails" messing with your mind
- zem 10y agothe "uo" letter sequence is pretty rare. from the latest collins wordlist: $ grep UO ~/CSW15.txt | wc -l 603 $ grep OU ~/CSW15.txt | wc -l 12564 the most common are QUO- and -UOUS words, plus a handful of _UOS words like "virtuoso"; removing those we are left with a handful of root words: FLUOR [as noted], BUOY [which americans pronounce "booee" and everyone else "boy", so the letter sequence even leads to dialect pronunciation differences!], DUO, LANGUOR [i've seen this misspelt a lot too], PLUOT, SKEUOMORPH, and a handful of scientific words like GLUON and VACUO-, and words borrowed from other languages like EUONYM and OCTUOR.
- coldtea 10y agoDon't know what you lot are talking about. It's very easy to read the article, get the basic argument down, and search for more information for everything that didn't sound convincing to you. It's an article that has a point -- right or wrong. Not everything has to be written as some journal submission.
- treve 10y agoI'd agree with you, yet the article leaves me with the same type of response. I don't know if it's true, but the writing style for me too invokes a feeling that I'm not getting the complete story. Similar to articles from conspiracy theorist or advertising for local unions (I live in Toronto, I have nothing against unions, but their ads just feel like I'm being lied to).
- kevinwang 10y agoI also thought it was easy to read and had no strong qualms with the style.
- mcguire 10y agoI'd like to sell you some BEAUTIFUL, SCENIC land in Florida, perfect for raising you're children in a CLEAN, WHOLESOME environment free from the HECTIC, DANGEROUS modern world.
- lucb1e 10y agoI found it very easy to read too, and when halfway through I remember thinking it's a great example of why I prefer blog posts so much over scientific papers. However I have to agree with the person you're replying to: the typos and general writing style were making me unsure of the trustworthiness. It's too black and white, not a nuanced list of pros and cons. It seems written to convince people who don't want to know the details, rather than the uninitiated.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago> It's very easy to read the article Not for me, at least. My eyes jump to the all-caps words, they jump to the repeated letters in "weeeeelllll....", and I find the unqualified binary assertions and fake dialogue utterly unconvincing. All these writing techniques combine to set off my crackpot and scam detectors. I agree with the article's premise, but it takes conscious effort to not dismiss it based on style issues.
- 27182818284 10y agoI agree. It just came off to me as made-up and non-authoritative.
- samf 10y agoAt least the author should have someone proofread it. There are grammar and spelling problems throughout.
- tosseraccount 10y agoCould use a fact check too. Atom was first split by humans in 1938, not 1945.
- nayuki 10y agoI thought the article made some interesting points, but the plentiful spelling errors were a red flag. They detracted from my reading experience and casted a doubt on the credibility of the author's writing. Examples: won;t, he(the) waste, yesterdays, todays, it's power source, flouride, bug(big), radio-active vs. radioactive, lots of unnecessarily Capitalized Words.
- theseatoms 10y agoIt seems to be written in a tone typically used for narrative fiction.
- mjfl 10y agoHe at the very least stole the setting, theme and the beginning from "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, mutilated it too.
- skykooler 10y agoIt's a writing style that is very familiar to anyone who has read X-Plane press releases. Austin Meyer is very fond of all-caps for emphasis.
- zamalek 10y agoLet's not forget that the technology is relatively unexplored. No matter how clean; nobody is going to use something that simply doesn't work. Funding is the only way to improve that, but it's definitely not as peachy as the article tries to make it look. The technology is not mature enough to take to your local congressman (unless you're after funding for research). Also, generation IV uranium reactors (e.g. PBR) are designed to be passively safe, although expensive. Thorium reactors will need to be safe and most of all cheap - we've become quite efficient at splitting uranium during all the years that thorium has been ignored. A reactor needs to be economically viable before it is built.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI agree, and I've been thinking about why that is. It starts with Szilard's understanding, and then misstates that it "was realized in 1945" (the year the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), but anyone who has read about atomic energy knows that the Szilard tested his theory with Fermi in Chicago as Chicago Pile 1 [1] in 1942. Secondly, it presents the choice of molten salt versus pressurized water reactors (PWR) as a binary choice when it clearly isn't. Running a reactor is a process not a simple act. Fueling and "cleaning" molten salt reactors is an additional burden on the reactor's operation. If you put the number of processes you have to develop to run a molten salt reactor to the number you have to develop to run a PWR, there are fewer processes for a PWR. So from a development stand point the PWR is the MVP of reactors. By the time the research was available on the needed processes for Thorium[2] nuclear power was already under siege [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_protests
- Gravityloss 10y agoYou need a lot more fuel fabrication and waste processing facilities for a conventional light water uranium reactor. This is because uranium fuel must be enriched, and there also is orders of magnitude more waste, because only a small portion of the fuel in the solid can be used. One could say that in a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) those separate plants are integrated in the same building, but they can be much simpler because of the very different nuclear physics and chemistry. Here's a simplistic diagram http://imgur.com/aKK7JaO http://imgur.com/aKK7JaO
- rleigh 10y agoBut in terms of processes, this diagram is too simplistic. What about all the attached chemical plant required for semi-continuous on-line fuel reprocessing? Keeping that safe, leak-free and coping with the activation of all the pipework and processing equipment is a huge engineering challenge. Don't get me wrong, I love the simplicity of the LFTR reactor, but keeping the reactor running at scale requires a lot of additional infrastructure around it, and that's the hard part.
- neves 10y agoSo terrible that I've stopped reading and came back to HN to read the comments to see if it was serious. Now I don't need to finish it.
- apendleton 10y agoThis article perpetuates a common misunderstanding about radioactive half-lives, which is that shorter ones are better because the waste isn't dangerous as long. Actually, isotopes with short half-lives are undergoing radioactive decay very quickly, and are thus much more highly radioactive than substances with longer half-lives. There are radioactive isotopes in dirt, vegetables, etc., but they pose us no risk because their half-lives are so long as to not radiate significantly enough for it to matter. Fission byproducts with 300-year half-lives are actually super dangerous. Interestingly, most thorium proponents point to this danger inherent in the thorium fuel cycle as a selling point, because it makes thorium waste so difficult to handle as to be a hindrance to proliferation. In general, even speaking as someone who's generally pretty excited about thorium power, I'm not a huge fan of this article because I don't get the sense that this author has a super-solid handle on the science.
- outworlder 10y agoIf a "waste product" is still that energetic, then is it waste after all?
- apendleton 10y agoAs I understand it, the main waste product of concern is Uranium-232, which is highly radioactive (half-life of ~70 years) but not fissile. Conceivably you could maybe use it for power generation in some other way, though, like with a radioisotype thermoelectric generator? I'm not sure it would be worth the effort, though.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoI do find it sad that we don't yet have a more efficient means of capturing the output of a nuclear reactor than heating liquid to power a turbine. Seems like there should be a more direct (and more efficient) path from fission or fusion to electricity.
- lmm 10y ago
- dyeje 10y agoInteresting note, this is the same person as the recently popular "I am being sued, in East Texas, for using Google" video.
- dnautics 10y agoHas a similar tone. I find the tone to work better with video than text.
- carlob 10y agoThe timeline is all wrong: > In 1945, theory was turned into practice. (I can’t even WRITE that without my skin crawling, but nevertheless, it can’t be un-done now). Immediately, the scientists saw that if they just slowed down the reaction a bit, they could get controlled power. Power almost without limit. Power without pollution. The first controlled chain reaction was achieved by Fermi in 1942, 3 years before Hiroshima.
- 27182818284 10y agoYeah this article is garbage and has a middle-school understanding of the history of things at best.
- 27182818284 10y ago"We can give you TWO kinds of reactors: URANIUM-based, where the by-product will be PLUTONIUM, which you can use to make bombs..." Countries aren't like "Oops I guess we have to make a bomb now," with the plutonium. They are very much happy with that possibility.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- shaqbert 10y agoAnd what the author handily omits: Since the Thorium fuel cycle is based around transmuting Thorium into U-233, which is fissionable, Thorium reactors can be a less complicated that Uranium enrichment pathway to the bomb. True, not the one the military likes because of U-232 impurities, but good enough for rogue states and other malicious actors to blow up a couple of blocks of a city. And that is why Thorium is actually tightly controlled. And why there won't be a Thorium revival.
- gusgordon 10y agoThe government didn't say "give us the one we can make bombs with" or anything like that. In a review [1] they discuss groups working on thorium reactors who find that these reactors are potentially cheaper than water cooled reactors, but there are uncertainties and a demonstration plant is needed. They basically state that thorium reactors might work well, but their potential benefits don't outweigh the existing industrial commitments. Sure, the reason for the existing infrastructure was for the ability to more easily make bombs. But when this was reviewed, it was possible to make bombs with Thorium, too. [2] There are advantages and disadvantages to thorium over common reactors, but it's definitely not a magic bullet. [1]: WASH-1222 (p. 49) http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/WASH-1222.pdf http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/WASH-1222.pdf [2]: https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html
- lpage 10y agoThe litany of contradictory or bad information on thorium reactors (and nuclear in general) is astounding. That's probably a function of both how polarizing nuclear energy is as a topic, and how nuanced the science actually is. First off, note that thorium is not the fissile material - it's the fertile material. Thorium 232 is transmuted into something else like Uranium 233 via a breeder reactor, so saying that these reactors use thorium "instead" of uranium is about like saying your gas powered automobile burns crude oil. As others have pointed out there's also a ton of bad information in this about fuel cycles and half life being the biggest driver of clean vs dirty nuclear, but lest I perpetuate more bad information... Here's a detailed look at the science: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and... Thorium or otherwise, it's tilting that the public perception of nuclear energy is based on dated technology. Almost as tilting as electric cars being marketed as zero emission. We as a society have to figure out better answers to power production. When you sell bad science or buzz words to people who really take them as such without realizing that the power still has to come from somewhere, there's less support for funding the research that gets us end-to-end clean power. Also, FWIW, the only reference I found to "war time politics" being the main driver was http://discovermagazine.com/2014/june/3-ask-discover http://discovermagazine.com/2014/june/3-ask-discover. I'm guessing the full history was far more complex and nuanced than that.
- nathan_f77 10y agoOh man, it's time for the annual thorium post. It doesn't need to be evangelized. Don't worry, the scientists and the energy companies are already aware of thorium.
- legulere 10y agoSearched for THTR-300 [1] in the article and nope doesn't come up. It was a commercial size thorium reactor and showed that with a different reactor design you simply have to fight with other problems which the German wikipedia article lists [2]. In the end it didn't offer any of the magical advantages often claimed for thorium reactors and the project ran out of money. Now the government has to pay to clean up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_THTR-300#Probleme_und_St.C3.B6rf.C3.A4lle https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_THTR-300#Problem...
- maerF0x0 10y agoiirc Flibe Energy is working on a LIFTR reactor http://flibe-energy.com/ http://flibe-energy.com/
- SCAQTony 10y agoNewport Tower was built in America in the year 1670. Now read this quote about how long Thorium will remain dangerous. "... And now, finally, the really big one: A Thorium Nuclear reactor would make much less radioactive waste than a convention Nuclear Power Plant, and most of the waste that it DOES make would only be dangerous for…. 300 years. ..." We could totally manage a Thorium nuclear waste site in a 300-year time frame! *Newport Tower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_i...
- skc 10y agoReads like a typical Thorium article. They always seem to imply that there is some worldwide government conspiracy against Thorium based energy. And they always gloss over the fact that this is an old idea that to this day still hasn't managed to prove any of its claims even as a proof of concept. Throw in the fact that renewable energy is picking up steam and you have a recipe for some very unhappy Thorium proponents indeed.
- neutronicus 10y ago> And they always gloss over the fact that this is an old idea that to this day still hasn't managed to prove any of its claims even as a proof of concept. This isn't true. There's been proof of concept. It's just that people who actually develop Thorium power make more reasonable claims, and its actual advantages aren't that compelling. Waste storage is next millenium's problem, and the cost of nuclear power is dominated by amortized infrastructure, so the economic advantage of thorium (fuel is more abundant, hence cheaper) just isn't very exciting.
- ridgeguy 10y agoThe post minimizes the utility of a thorium reactor for making fission weapons. Neutron irradiation of the most abundant isotope of thorium (Th232) produces U233. The US, the USSR and India have successfully tested U233 in fission weapons. [1] BTW, India has ~ the world's second largest known thorium reserves. [2] Also, I'd be concerned about the long-term corrosion effects of molten fluorides on pipes, pumps, etc., especially those parts that are in a high neutron flux environment. Not saying that Th reactors wouldn't be a better choice than what we've fielded to date, but the posted article doesn't lead me to that conclusion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium
- known 10y agoThe ratio of plutonium needed to seed and convert thorium into fissionable uranium-233 is very high (4:5) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
- tim333 10y agoThere's quite a good article debunking Thorium misconceptions here: https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html I found it interesting that the reactors can actually be quite good for making bombs. >In the case of the molten-salt U-233 breeder reactor, it was proposed to have continual chemical processing of a stream of liquid fuel. Such an arrangement also offers a way to completely bypass the U-232 contamination problem because 27-day half-life Pa- 233 could be separated out before it decays into U-233. And apparently U-233 works fine in bombs: >because of its low rate of spontaneous-neutron emission, U-233 can, unlike plutonium, be used in simple gun-type fission-weapon designs without significant danger of the yield being reduced by premature initiation of the fission chain reaction